Fire Someone Today!
April 20, 2009 by Phil Gerbyshak
Filed under Business
With all the firings going on in this crazy economy, I thought I’d share the 6 worst firing horror stories I’ve seen or heard about.
- Turn off their access badge to the building – I worked at a company where they would turn off associate’s access to their building and not tell anyone. There was no “tailgating” allowed (meaning you could only have 1 person in per badge), so each associate had to swipe in and swipe out. If you couldn’t swipe in, you couldn’t get in the building. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a security guard sprint over to ask someone to leave the premises for trespassing…until this happened. YIKES!
- Send out a firm-wide email (with the associate copied in BEFORE they knew they were fired) – A few of my friends have told me about this happening. NOT COOL!
- Using the overhead paging system, call them into the owner’s office – “Joe Smith, please come to the manager’s office.” Probably not a big deal…until you see that every person who gets called into the principal’s manager’s office comes out in tears. And then my friend got called in…as a brand new manager…and they let him know he should stay in the room to help fire the rest of the folks.
- Lock them out of their computer – I’ve worked in IT department’s at companies large and small, and some of the companies I’ve worked at have called the IT department to have their access removed…while the associate was at lunch. OUCH!
- Yank someone out of surgery – Instead of waiting until the shift was over, or at least until surgery was over, a nurse manager walked in during the middle of surgery and fired a nurse. WOW!
- Tag them at the holiday parties like Donald Trump – One of the places I worked at had a very volatile CEO. EVERYONE feared this guy, but they all knew he promoted only those he liked best, so everyone tried to get face time with him. The only time we had a chance to have that direct contact was at the holiday party, and folks would get a LITTLE too tipsy to get enough liquid courage to approach him. He would be dancing in a circle with his favorite folks, and others would try to nudge their way in. He’d tap folks in the head and say “You’re fired!” just like Trump (though this was before Trump). I thought he was kidding…until the security guards walked up and escorted those folks out.
What’s the worst way YOU’VE ever heard of anyone getting fired?
Trump’s bird’s nest courtesy of azrainman
A friend once told me that they called seveal people into a meeting. During the meeting he and the other Network Admins where frantically closing the user accounts.
One person being let go was off on vacation. When he got back he couldn’t log in so he called Network Admin. The was told to report to HR – period.
Phil: Surely there aren’t worse practices than the one’s you’ve listed. They’re utterly inept.
Inept isn’t with malice afore thought.
The worst act I know of was a boss who invited the entire company to lunch (28 people) and at the end announced the company had closed effective immediately and then left sticking the employees with the lunch tab.
I noticed the latest revision of the 1-page (small firm) phone extension list was missing a co-worker’s name & number, and brought it to the attention of the receptionist who had typed (yup, typewriter era) it up — I thought it was an oversight and was just trying to help. Ouch. She had to try to come up with a response right in front of the person in question, and totally screwed it up.
Wow, I thought I was alone.
I know a company of about 300 that laid-off 10% of its staff on December 23 (a few years back), without warning. Everyone thought the company was doing relatively fine. The company had a marginal month in November and the beginning of December in terms of sales. It was the company president’s idea of a way to kick the marketing staff to improve because they had not reached his expectations for the month-to-date.
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OUCH!!!